Despite what some say about their third album—often underrated in its significance—Led Zeppelin stood apart from many of their peers due to their remarkable consistency. While other iconic bands of the 1970s veered into drug-addled pretension or experimental prog-rock, the British quartet remained focused, steadily moving closer to realising Jimmy Page’s grand vision. A crucial factor in their success was that each member—Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, and Page—knew their precise role within the band, creating a unified and powerful dynamic.
The classic debate for the crown of Led Zeppelin’s greatest album is typically between 1969’s Led Zeppelin II and 1971’s Led Zeppelin IV, but in reality, all of their albums are excellent, musically, production-wise and within the context of the time they were released. They seamlessly moved with the times, which seemed to always be catching up with them, not the other way around.
As is the case with other pioneering bands such as The Beatles and Pink Floyd, the question of what their finest studio album is will rage on for as long as they remain culturally relevant. Yet, looking past the typical records that are celebrated as the best, there is an overlooked album that is far more accomplished than the mainstream gives it credit for and is celebrated by longtime, hardcore fans as their chef d’oeuvre: 1976’s Presence.
Despite being their most musically accomplished, Presence is the worst-selling Led Zeppelin album. A rather challenging but ahead of its time moment, the record is noted for being recorded when vocalist Plant was wheelchair-bound after suffering a serious car accident in 1975. It was a tough time for all involved, with Page committing to long shifts over several weeks to complete it. Arguably, it is the closest the band came to finally realising Page’s concept of instituting a truly dark and towering sonic character, and the record certainly lives up to its title.
The song that typifies the album’s majesty is the sprawling ten-minute epic ‘Achilles Last Stand’. Devoted fans have long deemed it the finest Led Zeppelin track, and it’s not hard to see why. Whether it be the captivating rhythm changes, Page’s unrelenting guitar work and tone, or Plant’s performance, it has everything that made the quartet so ahead of their time.
As the song is so fantastic, in 2019 on Digging Deep, The Robert Plant Podcast, the band’s vocalist dived into ‘Achilles Last Stand’. Of the track, he said, “the music I was so fortunate to be around.” He explained that the band were all gifted players, and he was akin to a wedding singer, stuck up front. Ever the realist, Plant always thought that his ultimate contribution to the group was his enthusiasm as more of a facilitating force for the talent of the other three. Furthermore, the song and album are afforded extra magic for him as it was born out of a period of great strife, “a desperate time”.
He also knows that Presence is not the most comfortable listen and not the kind of record you’d listen to over a glass of wine with your partner, but that doesn’t make it any less excellent for him, with ‘Achilles Last Stand’ typifying this. To Plant, the song is “insane” musically.
He explained: “The melody and the musicality of those three guys in that track is insane. It’s absolutely insane, it’s magnificent. So magnificent I had a lady friend who I was playing it and it came on in the house loud. She said: ‘I don’t wanna be left in a room with this on my own’. Because it’s so intense, it’s brilliant.”
Considering what was happening musically in 1976, with the advent of punk and older bands falling off a creative cliff, Presence remains a remarkable record, both for Led Zeppelin and music at large. In ‘Achilles Last Stand’, you hear the sound of rock’s future.